


Je ne Serai Jamais Complice

by WildandWhirling



Category: Don Juan - Gray
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Kissing, First Kiss, Juan is a prick but by God does he realize it, M/M, Power Imbalance, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 02:13:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22836079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WildandWhirling/pseuds/WildandWhirling
Summary: One night in a tavern changes the destinies of Don Juan and Don Carlos.
Relationships: Don Carlos/Don Juan (Don Juan - Gray)
Comments: 7
Kudos: 6
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Je ne Serai Jamais Complice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Arithanas](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arithanas/gifts).



> So, this was my first time writing for this fandom, but I thought it would be VERY interesting to try to work with it anyway. I have only watched the musical straight through one time and I feel like my voice for the characters will evolve more once I have more of a chance, but I couldn't resist the chance to write for a French-language musical, especially since I've had an affection for Les Fleurs du Mal for a long time.
> 
> We are also going to forget that I totally mixed up Elvira and Isabel's names the first time I published this, because the French, at least (sorry to the Zuka fans here) never really....calls most of the female characters by name, so I had to do some digging, and in this case, it got...jumbled.

The tavern is loud. That is the main thing Carlos is aware of, the sounds filling his ears past the point of retention, laughter, talking, shouting, screaming, one woman batting away Juan’s hands as they travel up her skirt, continuing to lean into his touch anyway. (The daughter of the Commendatore, Don Pedro...Doña Anna, he believes her name is, he is able to recognize her by her long braid and vibrant dress of yellow and black, even as there is so little else that he can register properly here.) Brightly colored dresses swirl in and out of sight, as the women dance with one man, then another so that it makes his mind ache to try to keep track of them all, the stomping of their feet overwhelming the music of the guitar and voice. The scent of alcohol filters through the floorboards, where an overenthusiastic hand had sploshed it on the ground while raising it to make a toast. (And then Juan had offered to buy drinks for the entire group, and it had been forgotten in the midst of more revelry, even as the dancers slipped occasionally in the puddle.) 

And there, in the center of the room, exactly where he wants to be, is Don Juan, throwing his head back in laughter to reveal gleaming white teeth (like those of a tiger, Carlos thinks as he swallows, following Juan’s vision to Doña Anna again, fascinating to look at, until they make you bleed.) In the dim orange glow of the tavern’s lanterns, his dark hair seems to be surrounded by orange light, though whether it’s a halo or the fires of Hell, Carlos doesn’t know. 

And then the two of them, Don Juan and Doña Anna, are in a chair together, Don Juan’s body pressed up tightly against hers, running one hand down her back as he uses the other to tip a glass of wine to her mouth, which she takes with innocent, interested eyes that Carlos knows very well will take her to the edge of destruction. 

“Carlos!” Don Juan says, raising his hand, and Carlos comes, because he will always come when he calls, because he has never known anything else to do since the time they were children. Don Juan calls, he comes, and he hates himself for it. 

“Don Juan,” he says stiffly, not able to take his eyes off of the two of them there, on that chair, feeling like he could retch even though there is nothing new to it. At times, he’s wanted nothing more than for Don Juan to fall in love with one woman, someone who he could love and devote himself to with the same passion that he devotes to the masses now. Someone with kind eyes and a heart steadfast enough to deal with Don Juan’s hundreds of abnormalities, all the twists and turns of his mind that Carlos knows and doesn’t know, the unmapped boundaries of it.

At times, he dreads it.

If Juan loves someone, really loves her, then it would be a permanent thing.

It would mean he could fall in love with someone and it could never be Carlos. A woman a night is a paper cut, though they build and build over time, with Juan outside the taverns, outside his bedroom (and many other bedrooms), remains his. Juan's jokes when he has no one to show off to, Juan's head resting on his shoulder when he finally collapses after a night or two without sleep, Juan's voice whenever he is excited over something and willing to take on the world for it, they are all his. 

“You’re making the entire room depressed, standing there in the corner! Come, some wine and women for you!”  
  
Carlos glares at Don Juan, though he can very rarely fully manage it. “Neither, if you want someone to be able to hold you up when you stagger home.”  
  
“Ah, but who says I will be going home tonight night, hm? Back to that house of the dead and the dying?” 

“Don Juan-” Carlos raises a hand, sighing. 

“A drink and some company for you, I won’t hear anything different, maybe that will lighten you up.” 

Carlos glares again. 

“Oh, I forgot I was dealing with our suffering Cistercian, who never looks at a woman save with pity.”

“I believe in love, Don Juan,” and Carlos’ voice is soft, eyes fixed on the ale-stained floor, because he knows that if he looks at Juan, everything will be lost. “Nothing purer than that.”  
  
“A drink,” Don Juan says, and he’s smiling again, dark eyes like gems, using his charm to get his way, and Carlos knows that he will fail, and he could lash himself for it, “And nothing else.”  
  
Don Juan, when he sets his mind on something, is impossible to dissuade, whether it’s a woman, a duel, or a goal. He can lounge about in a chair all day until something strikes him, and then he will be set out on it and nothing else, even if it’s the early hours of the morning. If he were minded towards more intellectual pursuits, they’d call him a genius, but given that he isn’t, he’s simply a libertine.  
  
“One drink. Nothing more.” 

Don Juan throws up his hands and laughs again (to the man who has everything, life is always a sport), ordering a drink for his friend. (He will never know, Carlos thinks as he downs the wine, how much the term “friend” is both a blessing and a curse.)

Carlos says that it will be one drink, and he means it. The stuff burns his mouth and tongue, bitter and acidic. He’s never fully understood the appeal of it to Don Juan, no matter how much he’s observed him, save that it is a release, and Don Juan will do anything for that. If he believed that walking through walls would grant him that, Carlos fully believes he would try it. 

But then he looks over, at Doña Anna, still pressed against Don Juan, whose hand is touching her waist, talking to her while she looks at him, transfixed with the same look that a hundred-a thousand women have looked at him with, young, old, rich, poor alike, and one becomes two and then three and then four and soon his mind is in a hazy, cloudy place, removed from the immediate cares of the world. 

  
“Don Juan,” Carlos leans in, hissing in his ear. “End this. That girl...she’s engaged. Her father would be furious.”  
  
“How would you stop me?” Don Juan says, eyes roving across his body, and Carlos hates that they both know that there’s nothing he could do. Don Juan because Carlos has never picked up a sword in his life and has a body that shows all the signs of being made for the study rather than the battlefield, Carlos because he knows that, even if he was more a Mars than a Vulcan, he could never do anything to hurt Don Juan. Argue with him, try to appeal to him, yes. But he could never do more. Even if perhaps the whole (and certainly one half) of Seville would be better for it. 

“For pity’s sake Don Juan-” and he stops, because he knows that pity will not win him, “Do you want to die?” 

  
“That old fool,” Don Juan scoffs, “Is more afraid of me than I am of him. What will he do, try to dual me with that trembling, rheumatic arm?”  
  


If Doña Anna hears, she has no response, only looking at that gaze that all the women have, after a certain point, totally lost in the spell of Don Juan, eyes closing slowly against him. 

  
“She is his only child, the only joy of his old age.”

“And now she will be the joy of my night.” 

“Don Juan-” And perhaps it wouldn’t matter, but he has had too much to drink, and all the quiet protests he would usually smother have come to the fore and he doesn’t have the good sense to keep them quiet. “You truly are despicable.” 

“What is more despicable,” Don Juan says, “Is to hang onto a man only to get him into heaven in the hopes of some moral victory. Even you,” Don Juan strides over to slap him on the shoulder, briefly leaving Doña Anna, “Have your vices.”

“More than you would think,” and Carlos might not have said it, any other time, when the moon shone less brightly or the wine hadn’t run so freely. But his words escape from him, and it seems natural. Good. 

“What? Does the Saint of Seville have anything that he is hiding? Come, surprise us all!”  
  
“Nothing that would interest you,” or at least, that’s what he hopes that he says. The words themselves come out more slurred. 

“What? Do you break your Friday fast?” Don Juan leans over to him, and they are nearly touching, Dib Juan’s wine-drenched breath flowing over him, and his head is too light to deal with this. “Come, Carlos, you are only making me guess. Why. Do. You. Do. It? Hm? Some attempt at getting me into heaven? Concern for my soul? Come, tell the world why you deign to spend your time with such a _sinner_!” 

Little he knows, despite thinking he knows everything. The things that Carlos imagines, late at night, would do very little for their souls. 

Were he sober, Carlos would have taken it quietly, giving a sad shake of his head as he stayed by Don Juan’s side and endured. But he is not sober and, along with the wine, Don Juan has given him a taste of something else that he has not tasted in a long time: Rebellion. 

And Carlos’ mind is telling him that, if Don Juan wants to know so badly, he should tell him. 

Get it over with.

Let Don Juan go back to a girl who will get him killed if her father finds out that his only, beloved child leapt into the arms of a libertine and forget about him. 

So, Carlos does as his mind bids him and closes the distance between him and Juan, a hand wrapping around behind his neck to anchor him in place. There is a pulse of energy that goes through his body at the contact, as he takes in Juan’s warm lips, his mouth, his skin beneath his hands, and he understands in that moment how so many women have yielded up their souls for that kiss. He knows, even through the wine, that he will never have this again, and his entire life up until now has been a single, mad, desperate hunt for it, and so if it is going to be the only time, he might as well make use of it. One taste of heaven and hell at once.

Juan staggers back, eyes widened, “Carlos, I didn’t-” 

“That was why. Good night, Don Juan.” 

He takes his leave then, stumbling out the door and into the night air, as the music inside plays on, mind still filling with what he’d done even if it can’t grasp the full consequences, just that something has changed, completely, irrevocably, that he’s broken the strange status quo, and that there will be no going back. 

For a glass of wine, he’d bartered everything. 

* * *

It is strange, the next few days. Juan has been a focus of his life for so long that he has almost forgotten _Carlos_ , the shy young boy who used to sketch insects and then excitedly show them to his mother (he never had it in him to kill them and pin them into a collection, better to let them be free). And without Juan to make him worry and fret and give him something to occupy his time, he is more and less himself than he’s been in years. 

A part of him, a small part of him, keeps expecting to hear a servant of his run in to tell him that Don Juan is there to see him, to see that shadowy figure at his door, pulling him into some new adventure that will lead to at least an hour in a confessional. 

But, that is not Juan’s way. 

He does not come to women, he lets them come to him. Or, at least, lets them think that they come to him, if there is any real difference. He will not seek him out, because to stoop to seeking a conquest, much less a friend, would be beneath his stubborn pride. 

Carlos considers sending a message, apologizing for his actions that night, wording it in such a way that he makes it clear that it was simply a mistake of the moment, that it reflected absolutely _nothing_. He would be by Juan’s side, giving his sad smiles and sighs and pining looks that Juan would never see because his head was too turned by the latest Andalusian beauty to cross his eye, and it would be normal again. But to do that feels like a betrayal of something that he has pushed down so deeply, so quietly into himself that it has fused with marrow and bone and blood. 

* * *

Isabel finds him three days later, the fortune teller standing at his front door as if it is her natural place, and he does not have it in him to dispute her, simply shrugging as he lets her into the house. 

“Don Juan is looking for you,” she says, with her usual tact, skirts rustling behind her as she moves inside. She looks out of place here, in a villa as opposed to a tavern or beneath the open sky, but if she feels it, she shows no sign of it, looking at him directly with a gaze that he always felt was too sharp, too knowing. In those eyes, he can see life and death, and though they have a certain bond, as they both understand what it is like to love a man who spurns love, he has never felt at ease with her. “You are the envy and curse of all the women of the city.” 

“How much do you know?” 

“What everyone knows. That you argued in a tavern and that you left, with Don Juan abandoning the Commandadore’s daughter to pine.”  
  
“I kissed him.”  
  
She closes her eyes, hands bunched at her sides. “ _Idiot_. In front of the world?” 

“In front of the world. And God, if he was there.” 

She rests her hand against her hip. “You are safe there, at least. God and Don Juan rarely walk the same paths as one another. What were you thinking?” 

“That I was very drunk.” He winces, remembering the hangover the next day. Why Juan willingly chose to do it regularly was beyond him. 

“Well, that at least explains it. For the first time, he’s been rejected.” 

“I’m sure he can find someone else to take his coat,” Carlos says.  
  
“Oh, you know how it is with him,” A smirk comes to her mouth, jostling the red curls that hang over her face, “He will always chase what it is he can’t have. But for now,” she runs her hands along her fringed shawl, “You are the most desired man in the world. How does it feel?”  
  
“I’m sure it isn’t that,” he argues. Juan has never showed an interest in him before, caring for him to the same degree he cares for a chair or the bed that he throws his latest conquests against. He isn’t relevant to Juan’s life. And for a long time, he thought it would be fine, until it wasn’t. 

“You’d doubt the sun in the sky, or the turn of the tide.” She laughs. “You are a pair. You who doubt everything, he who doubts nothing. No wonder he doesn’t know what to do without you.” 

“He only wants me because he is used to me,” he says, “There is nothing more to it than that. He wants his dog back.” If he says anything else, he might hope again, and hope was the worst thing, in the beginning. Having one moment where Juan might lean back in his chair and smile at him with his devil’s smile, for his heart to race at the thought that this might mean something more than Juan being himself, only for Juan to end up in one or two or ten beds by the end of the night, and Carlos to stand by, loyally, supporting Juan as he staggered home even as he felt his own heart tearing in his breast.

The first key to surviving it had been to realize it was pointless. The second was to realizing that Juan still needed him and that, if he couldn’t have his dearest wish, he could at least do what he could to prevent Juan from causing as much damage as his natural impulse would demand.  


“So much you know,” she says, “So little you see.” 

“And you?” He asks, “What do you see?”  
  
He doesn’t believe that she truly has the power to see the future, to believe it would be an insult to everything he had been taught from the time he was on his mother’s knee, clutching at the rosary the hung between her hands. No, he doesn’t believe it, but he does know that her predictions have a bizarre habit of coming true, and it will if nothing else distract her.

“For the first time?” She turns to him, a genuine smile on her face, “Salvation.” 

“The Church might disagree with that.”  
  
“If Don Juan could change for your sake? They would make you a saint on the spot and erect a statue to you in the city.” 

“I have my doubts that that’s how it-” He is no expert on the finer points of the Church, but the last time he checked, there was an extensive process that began at death.  
  
“In your case? Small details.” 

It is true, perhaps. Juan has become something of a menace to the Church and, if he was to settle into a lifetime of love with one person, the Church would probably care very little about whether it was a married woman, a man, or an especially beloved horse. So long as something resembling morality could return to Seville, any of Juan’s sins could be forgotten.  
  


She stays little longer, the two of them have nothing more to really speak about (strange; he has known her for over a year, and yet he knows little of her, their major shared bond being the man that’s broken both their hearts) and she is made for motion and not the confines of a stone house anyway. 

As she makes to leave, she pauses at the door, and she pauses for too long because, for one moment, he can see the vulnerability, the raw hurt that she tries to hide beneath a wall of derision. He moves to comfort her, but she raises a hand before he takes even a single step, knowing his next move before even he does. “Take care of yourself, regardless of what happens.”  
  
He chuckles. He doesn’t want her to see how this affects him, the talk of Juan, the hope of loving him, all the weight of an affection that had begun since childhood and that, really, he believes he might very well wear until the day he dies. “I am perfectly safe, Señora.” 

“Is anyone, with him?” She shakes her head one last time before walking out the door.

* * *

The night of the seventh day, he is preparing for bed, peeling off the layers of his clothing. In the winter, he might wear a thicker nightshirt, but it is summer, when the humidity and the night’s air are an overwhelming, hot pressure that bears down on him, so instead he is content with only a shirt of thin, fine cotton. (He knows, from too much experience, that Juan favors sleeping naked, but there is something too vulnerable about it for Carlos, even if it might be more comfortable in times like this.) 

He is midway through his first nightly prayer, his mother’s rosary hanging between his fingers as he kneels beside the bed when he hears something clink against the door to his balcony. Probably one of the youths choosing to prank him. He thinks very little of it, going back to his prayers, adding in a prayer for whoever chose to disturb him. 

Then another one. 

Then another. 

Then another. 

He sighs, crossing himself as he finishes, returning the rosary to its place of honor beside his bedside. Obviously, they will not be stopped for anything. Better to see what it is. 

He looks out the window to his balcony, seeing a familiar figure in black on the ground and, even though it is difficult to see in the darkness, the outline of what appears to be a large pile of pebbles nearby. 

He sighs, going onto the balcony, leaning over the railing. “Don Juan!” 

Really, it’s inevitable. There is, after all, only one man in Seville so incorrigible. (Possibly only one man in Spain, but he would need to be much more well-traveled than he is to know.)

“Finally, I have your attention.” Juan grins, rushing over to the sprawling trellises that grow, hitherto undisturbed along the white walls of the villa, and for a moment he is a shadow creeping along the stone before he swings a leg over the marble railing.  
  
Carlos chooses to stare him down rather than admit that it was impressive. “In the middle of the night?” 

“Is there a better time?” 

Juan is close to him now, the two of them in the same space again, and Carlos has forgotten how it is to be in the same air as him, feeling his presence intoxicating him. 

“Many.”  
  
“For the past week, you have ignored me.” 

“After-after what I _did_ , I thought it would be best.” He says it because his mouth would betray him if he tried to say _After I kissed you_. 

Juan laughs, hand crawling along his neck, “Only you could do something to surprise me and then leave.”  
  
“You know the secret now. All of it.” Juan is not offended, at least. After everything that Carlos has seen, the last thing he would want is for Juan to consider him as some predator who assailed him and then left. 

“How long?” Juan asks. 

“Do you really need to ask?” At Juan’s probing, intense stare, he gives. Juan knows it now, anyway. His oldest secret, so old that he and it are like family to one another, is out. He is mortified already, and there is nothing else to do now but to tell the full truth. “Over twenty years.”  
  
“Since we were children?”  
  
“Since we met.” From the first time they had met, when Carlos had peeked out from beneath the table he'd been hiding under at a party to meet dark, dangerous eyes, his life had never been the same. 

“And nothing-all these years?”  
  
“You had your interests,” and it is impossible to keep the bitterness from edging in, the pain from a thousand knife wounds entering into the word _interests_. 

“My diversions,” Juan tilts his head as he looks at him, and Carlos can’t prevent himself from swallowing. That _look_. He’s seen it a thousand times, towards a thousand different women, but he’s never seen it towards him. It’s the look of pure desire, one that could melt the most jaded of hearts and convince them that they are the only thing that matters. Juan leans over, breath warm against Carlos’ mouth, and it is everything that he has ever wanted and perfect and awful and-

He springs back, even as he feels his heart wrenching against it. “No. I know, Don Juan. I know. You want me now because I have rejected you, and you can’t stand it. But I won’t be-”

“Carlos!” 

And this is something new from Juan, something visceral and real. Normally, when a woman rejects him, he laughs it off, changes his approach, and decides to return later, when he knows that they’ll continue their dance. But he does not _show_ weakness. Even when he wins them over with pretty words and promises, there is something smooth, polished to them. There is nothing smooth and polished about the cry that wrenches itself out of his throat. 

It makes him stop in his tracks. 

“Don’t go,” Juan says. “Don’t. Stay.” 

Carlos obeys, feet locked onto the brick, because if they move further, he thinks he’ll stumble. 

“When you were gone...at first I thought I would be happy. I would have no millstone around my neck, reminding me of _right_ and _wrong_ and _good_ and _evil_ . But then-” Juan almost growls, “I realized that nothing felt as it should. The wine was stale, the women staler. Nothing _mattered_ . There is no Don Juan, not without Don Carlos by his side. I’ve not realized that in the past.”  
  
“You treated me like a dog.” He wanted to say servant at first, before realizing that he treats his servants better. Not equals, but better. Juan, however, seems to believe that he was more Rocinante than Sancho. And he had agreed with it, because to disagree would mean possibly losing Juan, and he couldn't do that until it was almost too late. 

“I did. Carlos-” He approaches, hand raised out, and Carlos stiffens before Juan retracts it, “I’ve treated you poorly. And I don’t know what I want to do with this, whatever it is. It is new, it is….frightening. Look at me, Carlos, you make me afraid. For the first time in my life, I am afraid, and have been since that night in the tavern. But I don’t want things to be as they have been.”  
  
Carlos relaxes. “Neither do I.”

Juan’s hand hesitates as it reaches out to tentatively touch his cheek, with a fear that is totally alien to it, thumb brushing his skin. 

“Do not break my heart, Don Juan. That is all I ask.”  
  
“Nor you mine,” Juan says, closing the gap between them. “This is newer to me than you, still. And Carlos?"   
  
"Yes."   
  
"Juan, after all these years. Just Juan." 

He is prevented from saying it, though, by Juan's lips against his, the name, so bare and intimate, being cut off with a soft moan. 

The kiss is different from the rushed, awkward thing in the tavern. Warm, tender, Juan’s hands coming to rest about his neck while he relaxes into it. No tension, even as some fear continues to inch in. This is normal, even if he can’t believe it, even if he can understand, in that moment, why so many women have climbed onto the pyre for a single touch of those lips. Even if it is all he can do to remember how to breathe. 

Juan’s tongue seeks out more and Carlos pulls away. 

“No.” Carlos says, even as some part of him wants nothing more than to seek out Juan’s skin beneath his shirt and vest. “Not yet.” Juan is in earnest now, he knows it. But he will not do this now, so quickly. A lifetime of following in his shadow, wanting _more_ , and his mind cannot grasp the possibility of it happening. He would be less surprised if an angel came to him and told him that he was to become king of Spain, of the world. He would be less surprised if an elephant were to walk down the streets, anything but the man he’s in love with to return those feelings. 

And he cannot be another conquest, he cannot have one night of passion and then another lifetime of yearning. 

“No,” Juan agrees, angling for another, chaste kiss, and things are tentative, new still, but promising. They are not a statue made of unfeeling stone, something that will last the centuries unless it is forcibly torn down, they are two men of flesh and blood, flawed, weak in their own ways, but for now, they _are_ , and that is enough. 

**Author's Note:**

> So, historical mea culpa, insofar as this musical IS in anyway historical: Would it be socially acceptable for two men to kiss in public in ~17th century Spain, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition? Legally, no, but in practice, it could vary, and...Don Juan is hardly socially acceptable anyway. If either of them caught flack for it, it would probably be CARLOS, but...there have actually been some really, really interesting studies done on what actually went on, and how public it really COULD be.


End file.
